Jul212008

Bill Frist, MD

The first stop this morning was the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center.
John Podesta and I laid a wreath at the mass grave site of the genocide
victims. I had the opportunity to do this last year when I was in
Rwanda with Samaritan’s Purse, Scott Hughett, and my wife, Karyn (who
is at home now recuperating from back surgery). The site and the
service in which we participated are a moving, memorial remembrance of
the million people who died over those 100 days of genocide. (It is so
hard to comprehend). Each member of our delegation laid a single rose
alongside the wreath, one by one, as we each paid our respects. Beneath
that wreath lay a mass grave, one of many at the site, containing the
partial remains of over 5,000 individuals from the Kigali region.

It
was remarkable that the memorial was designed to tell the story a mere
four years after the genocide occurred, during a time when the horror
and pain and raw feelings surely must have been still high. The result
is a gripping, very tough, realistic portrait achieved through graphic,
yet telling, photographs, video interviews, and displays.

We
then had lunch at the famous Hotel des Mille Collines, where so much of
the 1994 history took place. On the patio we heard first-person
testimonials from both a perpetrator, a man who had killed many, many
of his fellow Rwandans, and a victim, whose vivid story left all of us
in tears. She had watched her husband and children murdered, escaped
amidst mass killing in her village (by people she knew), been captured
and tortured with repeated sexual assaults by fifteen men, received
massive lacerations and broken bones by machete, and yet, she survived.
At the table, sitting a mere three feet apart were killer and
victim/survivor. How does a country like this move forward? Rwanda is
confronting the past openly, with discussion, truth, forgiveness and
reconciliation. And they are looking to the future, a future full of
hope. This is a lesson of human resilience, played out in our presence:
on the patio of the Hotel des Mille Collines.

The greater
meta-story is the confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation, not just
of these two but of the thousands of Rwandans who just fourteen years
ago had identical experiences. How could they forgive? How could they
live together even today? If you ever think something seems impossible,
reflect on the fact that just fourteen years after genocide, Rwanda has
both killer and victim living side by side, together. It doesn’t seem
possible but everywhere we go we see this reconciliation process well
established and underway, opening up a fresh start for the future.
Other Rwandans at the lunch stimulated an enlightening discussion.
Rwanda is about reconciliation, not retaliation. Their experience is
that repentance begins with confession and leads to reconciliation
which leads to justice. They claimed it was important to remember the
past, but not to fixate upon it. We learned so much. There are about
350,000 survivors of genocide today. As you can imagine, these
survivors were deeply wounded by the experience, and they are still in
need of assistance and care.

We also learned that the court
system is pure Rwandan. It is a local innovation which launched to deal
with the 120,000 suspects of genocide. Traditional courts were too slow
and failed for four years; thus, the new court system was adopted.
Today there remain 4,000 perpetrators to be tried. The goal of these
courts is to seek justice and reconciliation. Perpetrators are
punished, but if they confess to their victim’s family and community,
they are given leniency.

The world abandoned Rwanda in 1994.
The U.S. failed; we watched on the sidelines. We failed humanity. This
failure pushed me to bring the genocide resolution against the
government of Sudan with respect to Darfur to the floor of the Senate,
as Majority Leader. I did so when the Administration and the State
Department did not want to call it “genocide” (though six weeks later,
the Administration did label it “genocide”). Yet, when Americans, like
our delegation, come to Rwanda, the Rwandan people told us that they
are left with the feeling that now “We are not alone.”

Rwanda’s
“fresh start” is being accelerated by a remarkable president and a
government who understand how good governance can facilitate private
sector growth to fight poverty. For instance, coffee washing stations
open up new worlds for those who had once lost hope. They say again and
again that they don’t want “hand-outs,” they want “hand-ups.” They are
doing whatever it takes to maximize economic growth: to expand business
and foreign investment. They looking and moving ahead with remarkable
speed instead of looking backward.

None of what I’ve written
gives justice to the nature of the lunch with Rwandans, but I share it
just to give you a feel of Rwanda today. In the words of Rwandan
Senator Odette Nyiramilimo, M.D., “The past fourteen years have been a
time of stabilization; the next ten years are a time of economic growth
and opportunity.”

What a morning. A heavy weight was felt by all as we departed the famed hotel with unimaginable images in our minds.